Solemncholy (pronounced sol-uhm-kol-ee)
(1)
Solemn; serious.
(2)
Solemn and melancholic.
1772:
The construct was solemn + (melan)choly. The element –choly was never a standard
suffix and was a Middle English variant of –colie
used in French. The Middle English adjective solemn
dated from the late thirteenth century and was from solemne & solempne,
from either Old French or directly from the Late Latin sōlennis & sōlempnis
or the Classical Latin sōlemnis, a variant
of sollemnis (consecrated, holy; performed
or celebrated according to correct religious forms) which has always been of
obscure origin although Roman scholars thought it could have come only from sollus (whole; complete), the derivative
adjective formed by appending the noun annus
(year), thus the idea of sollemnis meaning
“taking place every year”. Not all
modern etymologists are convinced by that but acknowledge “some assimilation
via folk-etymology is possible”. In
English, the extension of meaning from “annual events; sacred rites,
ceremonies, holy days” to “a grave and serious demeanor; mirthless” was
associative describing the behaviour expected of individuals attending such
events. Over time, the later sense
became dissociated from the actual events and the original meaning became
obsolete, surviving only in a handful of formal ecclesiastical calendars. The word, without any reference to religious
ceremonies meaning “marked by seriousness or earnestness” was common by the
late fourteenth century, the sense of “fitted to inspire devout reflection”
noted within decades.
Melancholy was from the Middle English melancolie & malencolie (mental disorder characterized by sullenness, gloom, irritability, and propensity to causeless and violent anger), from the thirteenth century Old French melancolie (black bile; ill disposition, anger, annoyance), from the Late Latin melancholia, from the Ancient Greek μελαγχολία (melancholia) (atrabiliousness; sadness, (literally “excess of black bile”)), the construct being μέλας (mélas) or μελαν- (melan-) (black, dark, murky) + χολή (kholḗ) (bile). It appeared in Latin as ātra bīlis (black bile) and was for centuries part of orthodox medical diagnosis and the adjectival use was a genuine invention of Middle English although whether the used of the –ly as a component of the suffix was an influence or a product isn’t known. Pre-modern medicine attributed what would now be called “depression” to excess “black bile”, a secretion of the spleen and one of the body's four “humors” which needed to be “in balance” to ensure physical & mental well-being. The adjectival use in Middle English to describe “sorrow, gloom” was most associated by unrequited love or doomed affairs but this is likely more the influence of poets than doctors. As the medical profession’s belief in the four humors declined during the eighteenth century as understanding of human physiology improved, the word was in the mid-1800s picked up by the newly (almost) respectable branch of psychiatry where it remained a defined “condition” until well into the twentieth century.
The physicians from Antiquity attributed mental depression to unnatural or excess "black bile," a secretion of the spleen and one of the body's four "humors," which help form and nourish the body unless altered or present in excessive amounts. The word also was used in Middle English to mean "sorrow, gloom" (brought on by unrequited love, disappointment etc). In antiquity it was a concept rather than something with a standardized systemization and there existed competing models with more or fewer components but it’s because the description with four was that endorsed by the Greek physician Hippocrates (circa 460–circa 370 BC) that it became famous in the West and absorbed into medical practice. The four humors of Hippocratic medicine were (1) black bile (μέλαινα χολή (melaina chole)), (2) yellow bile (ξανθη χολή (xanthe chole)), (3) phlegm (φλέγμα (phlegma)) & (4) blood (αἷμα (haima)), each corresponding with the four temperaments of man and linked also to the four seasons: yellow Bile=summer, black bile=autumn, phlegm=winter & blood=spring. Since antiquity, doctors and scholars wrote both theoretical and clinical works, the words melancholia and melancholy used interchangeably until the nineteenth century when the former came to refer to a pathological condition, the latter to a temperament. Depression was derived from the Latin verb deprimere (to press down) and from the fourteenth century, "to depress" meant to subjugate or to bring down in spirits and by 1665 was applied to someone having "a great depression of spirit", Dr Johnson (Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784) using the word in a similar sense in 1753. Later, the term came into use in physiology and economics.
What was for over two-thousand years known as melancholia came gradually to be called depression, a reclassification formalized in the mid-twentieth century when mental illness was subject to codification. The first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM (1952)) included depressive reaction and the DSM-II (1968) added depressive neurosis, defined as an excessive reaction to internal conflict or an identifiable event, and also included a depressive type of manic-depressive psychosis within the category of Major Affective Disorders. The term Major Depressive Disorder was introduced by a group of US clinicians in the mid-1970s and was incorporated into the DSM-III (1980). Interestingly, the ancient idea of melancholia survives in modern medical literature in the notion of the melancholic subtype but, from the 1950s, the newly codified definitions of depression were widely accepted (although not without some dissent) and the nomenclature, with enhancements, continued in the DSM-IV (1994) and DSM-5 (2013)
According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the earliest known instance of solemncholy in text dates from 1772 in the writings of Philip Vickers Fithian (1747–1776), peripatetic tutor, missionary & lay-preacher of the Presbyterian denomination of Christianity, now best remembered for his extensive diaries and letters which continue to provide historians with source material relating to the pre-revolutionary north-eastern colonies which would later form the United States of America. His observations on slavery and the appalling treatment of those of African origin working the plantations in Virginia remain a revealing counterpoint to the rationalizations and justifications (not infrequently on a theological or scriptural basis) offered by many other contemporary Christians. Those dictionaries which include an entry for solemncholy often note it as one of the humorous constructions in English, based usually on words from other languages or an adaptation of a standard English form. That’s certainly how it has come to be used but Fithian was a Presbyterian who aspired to the ministry, not a breed noted for jocularity and in his journal entries its clear he intended to word to mean only that he was pursuing serious matters, in 1773 writing: “Being very solemncholy and somewhat tired, I concluded to stay there all night.”
So
it was an imaginative rather than a fanciful coining. In contemporary culture, with mental health
conditions increasingly fashionable, solemncholy (although still sometimes, if
rarely, used in its original sense) found a new niche among those who wished to
intellectualize their troubled state of mind and distinguish their affliction
from mere depression which had become a bit common. In a roundabout way, this meant it found a role
too in humor, a joke about someone’s solemncholy still acceptable whereas to
poke fun at their depression would be at least a micro-aggression:
Q:
Victoria says she suffers from solemncholy. Do you think that's a real condition?
A:
Victoria is an emo; for her solemncholy
is a calling.
Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.
The companion term to solemncholy is the sometimes acronym leucocholy (a state of feeling that accompanies preoccupation with trivial and insipid diversions). The construct of leucocholy was leuco- + (melan)choly. The leuco- prefix (which had appeared also as leuko-, leuc- & leuk-) was from the Proto-Hellenic λευκός (leukós) (white; colourless; leucocyte), from the primitive Indo-European lewk- (white; light; bright), the cognates including the Latin lūx, the Sanskrit रोचते (rocate), the Old Armenian լոյս (loys) and the Old English lēoht (light, noun) from which English gained “light”. In the Ancient Greek, the word evolved to enjoy a range or meanings, just as in would happen English including (1) bright, shining, gleaming, (2) light in color; white, (3) pale-skinned, weakly, cowardly & (4) fair, happy, joyful. Leucocholy is said to have been coined by the English poet and classical scholar Thomas Gray (1716–1771) whose oeuvre was highly regarded despite being wholly compiled into one slim volume and he’s remembered also for declining appointment as England’s Poet Laureate, thereby forgoing the both the tick of approval from the establishment and the annual cask of “strong wine” which came with the job. What he meant by a “white melancholy” seems to have been a state of existence in which there may not be joy or enchantment but is pleasant: unfulfilling yet undemanding. In such a state of mind, as he put it: ca ne laisse que de s’amuser (which translates most elegantly as something like “all that is left for us is to have some fun”).
